A delegation of 40 Singaporeans from the creative, lifestyle and education sectors of Singapore spent four days in Delhi from 15-19 September.
This delegation was part of the Spotlight Singapore in Delhi, Singapore’s premier cultural diplomacy platform from the country’s not-for-profit arts sector. For five days, the delegation engaged in a programme that saw an official opening ceremony, a panel discussion, a performance featuring collaboration between Singapore and Delhi-based musicians, visits to historical sites and industry visits.
Launched in 2006, Spotlight Singapore has been to seven major cities around the world exploring emerging markets for Singapore and to foster mutual understanding and business exchange between Singapore and the world’s growth-leading economies. Since its first edition, Spotlight Singapore has taken more than 1,000 Singaporean entrepreneurs, across all sectors to the following cities: Hong Kong and Tokyo (2006), Moscow (2008), Cape Town (2011), Bratislava and Prague (2012), and Mexico (2015).
Spotlight Singapore is a brand of The RICE Company Ltd (TRCL), a Singapore-based not-for-profit arts and cultural organisation, which focuses on providing free arts education to underserved children and youths in Singapore. It is curated and managed by non-profit Global Cultural Alliance (GCA), a subsidiary of TRCL, which engages in cross-cultural programmes and aims to provide a wider platform for Singapore’s creative industries outside of Singapore.
At the event, Phan Ming Yen, Chief Executive Officer of GCA said, “India and its culture has been an integral part of Singapore’s heritage and cultural fabric. As an organisation which looks at providing a broader platform for Singapore’s creative industries as well as aiming to enrich cultural intelligence of Singapore’s cultural practitioners, doing a cross cultural programme in Delhi was inevitable.
“We hope that the programme, which sees Singapore delegates visiting both independent and government linked institutions in Delhi as well as private enterprises will result in greater collaboration between the two countries.”
The official opening ceremony on 16 September was graced by the guests of honour, Lim Thuan Kuan, High Commissioner of Singapore to India and Arun Goel, Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, India. Both the guests of honour spoke about the importance of cross cultural ties between Singapore and India, of such past efforts and of how programmes like Spotlight Singapore in Delhi 2019 contributed to a continuing cultural dialogue between the two countries. The business component of the event was curated by Millet World, another subsidiary of TRCL, which focuses on place making and space management for Singapore’s creative industries.
In the spirit of cultural collaboration, the opening ceremony also saw a performance between Singapore musicians Delhi-based musicians. Here, Singapore flautist and music director Tan Qing Lun conceptualised an original work, Ajana, which also featured award-winning Singaporean percussionist Riduan Zalani on the Malay drums and Singaporean producer and keyboardist Lee Ein Ein together with Delhi-based sitar master Sunil Kant Saxena and young tabla player Mohit Raj.
This was followed by a panel discussion, titled “Everything is connected: Bridging Borders and Building Communities in a 21st Singapore-India Relationship”. The panellists were well-known hotelier Maneesh Baheti from India, Deputy Principal of Temasek Polytechnic Anita Kuan from Singapore, landscape artist Ann Teo from Singapore and founder of Asian Confluence, Sabyasachi Dutta from India. The discussion saw lively engagement from the audience, with questions on how the panel members envisioned future Singapore-India relations as well as how does the private sector engage in cross-cultural and cross-border relationship in the light of a sense of rising nationalism around the world.
The event also saw visits to key cultural institutions such as India Habitat Centre, KHOJ Studios and Development Alternatives as well as business visits to organisations such as Circus at Cyber City and fashion label Raghavendra Rathore.
Sun Yu-Li, a renowned Singapore artist and chairman of Millet World said, “This visit to Delhi has been enriching for the insights it has given us from Singapore on how the social enterprise and arts sector works in Delhi. We are indeed inspired by the single mindedness of intent by the cultural and creative sector in Delhi to constantly strive to make change for the better despite overwhelming odds.”
The programme concluded with a post-card writing project between the beneficiaries of Singapore’s The Business Times Budding Artists Fund, which is managed by TRCL, to children from Gurgaon. These children who live in the slum area outside of Gurgaon are from the iFuture project, an initiative of Global Social (India) Foundation, which provides education in literacy, art and other disciplines to the less privileged in India. Here, 30 children from underprivileged homes from Singapore wrote and drew postcards to 30 chidlren under the care of the iFuture projet.
Anita Kuan, Deputy Principal of Temasek Polytechnic, one of the leading institutes of higher learning in Singapore, attended the event with 11 students from the polytechnic. She said, “For our Business, Hospitality and Management students, the diversity of the programme gave them a glimpse into Delhi’s various industries. Equally powerful was their awakening to India’s rich culture, experienced through the personal interactions. While we will follow up on some of these connections, our bigger hope is for this generation of young leaders to build a sustainable relationship between Singapore and India in various sectors.”